Wishful thinking . . .

This time of year we hear a lot about wishes for the coming year and within thirty days it just turns into wishful thinking.  So much of life comes down to the tension between what we wish to be and what is just wish fulfillment.

As a Christian I am familiar with this territory.  My skeptic friends usually pose this question: "how do you know that your faith isn't just wishful thinking?"

But when it really boils down, everything is wishful thinking.  I mean if you are an atheist, the idea that there is no God is the best way that you can reconcile that there is evil in the world or there are pedophile priests or the fact that you didn't get what you prayed for.  It actually unifies your thoughts about the world if there were no God.  So in a strange way, the atheist too engages in wishful thinking.

The believer
The atheist
The agnostic
The transcendentalist
The materialist

The list could be as long as my arm - we all find ways to justify our particular view of the world.  But note that it is the view that comes first and the justification second.  We want a worldview that fits what we see - and that is the wish fulfillment we engage in (and not the other way around).

And perhaps the most interesting take on this is that, in the end, one of these views is correct . . .